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It must surely rank as one of the most surreal press conferences in the history of devolution.

McDonald had been abandoned by his former SNP colleagues, was about to be whisked away to a new basement office nicknamed “the dungeon” and seemingly needed a policeman stationed outside the door in case of trouble.

Yet he still showed absolutely no emotion whatsoever.

The married father-of-two calmly entered the cramped room hastily arranged by the parliament’s press team and gave no reaction at all to the explosion of camera flashes that greeted him.

He then slowly unscrewed the lid from a bottle of water and poured himself a glass. There was not even the suggestion of a tremor in his hand.

His speech patterns reeked of extensive media training.

Mark McDonald somehow managed to be both contrite and defiant at the same time (Image: Getty Images Europe)